So, I was having a conversation with my stepdad about this the other day about this. My main use for the iPod is to keep me occupied on the hour and a quarter to and from college on the bus every day. Most of the kids who go to the college come from the other direction (I'm going up the valley, they're coming down it), so a lot of days I don't see anybody on the bus that I know. This is the simplest situation, you put in your headphones and you're set all the way. All you have to worry about is if your headphones leak sound and a loud song comes on that makes people look at you strangely. Last week I bought some £30 Sennheiser earbuds (reduced + discount), so that's that problem pretty much sorted out. I guess it's everybody else's loss that they can't hear my awesome music now.

Next: when you're listening to your portable music player of choice when you see a friend. My reaction in this situation is to turn off the music altogether, take out the earphones and strike up a conversation.

What about when you see an acquaintance? For example, a friend's girlfriend, a classmate who you aren't close with, or somebody you recently attended a maths competition with. This is much more difficult. There are several options:
a) Pretend you haven't seen them.
b) Nod at them, possibly adding a perfunctory greeting. Don't remove the headphones or adjust the volume. After this, pretend you don't see them.
c) Turn the volume down or remove one headphone. Say hello.
d) Turn off the music and take the headphones out altogether. Say hello.

There are problems with all of these. For a), obviously, if it's not believable that you haven't seen them, like if you've made eye contact or they sit down next to you, then you're going to come off as rude. To maximise believability I find staring in the opposite direction simple but effective. Of course, that's only going to work up to a point.

With b) it depends heavily on how much the other person wants to talk to you. Sometimes you'll both just nod and then be content to just ignore each other. If the other person speaks to you, however, you're in trouble, especially if you couldn't hear what they said. This means you have to take out one or both headphones and politely ask them what they said, which puts us in the same position as c) and d). (If they speak and you don't react or remove the phones, this can also seem rude).

Option c) and d)'s main problem is that you have to wait for the exchange with the acquaintance to finish before you put your headphones back in, and it can be very difficult to tell when that is. If you put them back in and then they say something else to you, you have to take them back out again. Once this happens, you're reluctant to put them back in again, which tends to lead to awkward silences. Several times I've gotten stuck wanting to put my music back in but feeling too awkward to do anything except stand there and be awkward.

This is even worse when someone you don't know starts speaking to you on the bus. These are generally older people, who'll remark to you about the weather, insist on touching you on the arm when they talk to you, and tell you about their prescription and their pets that have died. They don't understand about headphones and don't seem to realise when I have them in it means I'm listening to noise. And as soon as you think they've talked themselves out and put the headphones back on, they start talking again. Don't get me wrong, I give up my seat for an elderly people on the bus, I'm cool with old people, I'm just not big on talking to people I don't know on the bus, especially when I just wanted an hour to myself to listen to You Look Nice Today to cheer myself up.

So what do you do? Man, the sooner I learn to drive the better, it's going to solve all manner of problems.

Also, space was in the news today. I like it when that happens.

Dead Set is amazing. It's Big Brother with zombies and everybody must watch it.

I had a dream once about the zombie apocalypse. It's the only dream I've ever had that has felt like it's lasted for days, which convinced me that it wasn't a dream and that life as I knew it really was over. But I lasted for days before I woke up, and even then I didn't wake up because I was eaten, it was just because my alarm went off. So I'm quite confident that when that day does come, I'll get by ok.

But I'm getting a little paranoid about it now, because I can't stop making mental preparations. I'm beginning to feel sure that there's going to be an outbreak while I'm in London.

Also, I just lost the game again damnit!

Lot of sleepless nights recently, and difficulty eating. Which if you knew me, would seriously worry you. And walking around with this big stupid smile plastered over my face, even though that's the reverse of how I should be reacting to. It can only end in trouble. But I'm chilling out maxin relaxin this week, gwanin off to meet some friends and catch up on old times, and seeing a band and stuff, not doing my homework or learning my songs. So should be a cool kinda week.

And finally, I decided that I want to be an astronaut. So you'll be hearing some more about that in the future I reckon

Wow. Picture this. You're on the best online comic in the world, xkcd, when you chance upon this strip, entitled 'Listen To Yourself':



Now imagine, barely a fortnight after that particular panel was released, that you venture onto the youtube and happen upon an 'Audio Response' button in the comment box.

Youtube

I almost had a heartattack of awesome.


In other news, I can't move my neck, I have many strange circular bruise all over my limbs, and I'm half deaf. No, I'm not having a stroke. I went to a Glamour of the Kill gig last night and had a freaking awesome time, they were even better than last time. And discovered a new band! The Hotel Ambush. Man, I love the music scene in South Wales. Or, as I like to call it, Old South Wales.


Lordy, Christmas is coming and it's terrifying. I do not enjoy singing Christmas carols in September. But Halloween is also coming, which means brand new cinema! Woohoo. Although that means I'll soon know what it feels like to go to the pictures alone.

Yo ho, me hearties! I haven't been able to get this song out of my head all day. So I thought I'd share.

Okay, normally I don't enjoy reposting memes, but this one isn't one of those generic Q&As and I can actually waffle on a bit, so I'll give it a bash. Jacked from cleolinda (who, by the way, I am a massive fangirl of).

So, I need to come up with 10 things that probably only I have done. Here... we... go.
( Wanna know how I got these scars? )


Another fun fact about me: I don't pronounce my own name correctly.


And in world news, J. K. Rowling won her case again the Lexicon! The world didn't end! (Well, not for another couple of weeks at least.) And I discovered free podcasts, and my disk space has been decreasing ever since...

You know what my new favourite thing to do when I feel depressed is, to cheer myself up? Smoke a cigarette Read Cannibal Corpse's song titles.

Me and a coworker were going through the tracklists' to their albums yesterday. I was almost crying with laughter. Leave Tomb of the Mutilated til the end. ('Addicted to... oh my word!' and 'I... You know, I hear that he does. And there's a live version, so you can listen to it twice!')

Here's a sample of the delights in store for you:

Brain Removal Device - Kill
Blunt Force Castration - The Wretched Spawn
Sanded Faceless - Gore Obsessed

...

There's 10 albums of it! Love it.


And Batman was crazily awesome. We got into the cinema a little bit too late; we were the second row from the very front. So to see the action onscreen, you actually had to move your head from side to side. But oh my daisies, it was good. So good it left me incoherent. And I'm usually 'that person' who goes on and on about all the nuances of the film. I'm so going to see it again.

Ehm, I almost snapped my *pause* left foot off today on my way home. Damn steep stairs by ASDA... and my inability to look were I was going...



FAIL. It doesn't even look so bad in that photo. But it's now about the size of half a tennis ball glued to my foot.

My family have a history of breaking their bones. I swear, if I've broken anything I am going to go mental. I refuse to have it put in a cast. I  really refuse. I walked home on it, for goodness sake. It's fine.

For example, in the last years and a half or so:

• My sister broke her leg riding a horse after going over a jump (so badly that she had to have metal pins put into her leg)
• My nan fell on her face and broke her foot, messed up her cornea (luckily temporarily) and cracked some ribs
• The horse stood on my Mum's foot and broke it (er, yeah, I think the horse is evil. I stay away from it now)
• My brother fell in the playground and broke his arm

Oh, and my ear got messed up by an ear piercing too. That earned me a week and a half in hospital, thanks.

I know I was thinking today that I need more happy accidents, but this isn't a happy accident. This is an injurous accident. I don't like injurous accidents. And to add insult to injury, my mp3 player ran out of battery on my way home. So I had to limp home in silence

First off, I got a major scare earlier hearing about the fire at Universal studios and that 40,000 to 50,000 master reels had been destroyed in the blaze. Luckily they're saying that all of the masters they had there have been copied so nothing has been lost forever, but for about an hour I was seriously bummed out about it. But it kinda sucks quite badly that the Back to the Future, To Kill a Mockingbird and King Kong sets have been damaged. That picture of the fire though looks like something out of a film, doesn't it?

Is it lame I got worried about that?

Ehm, and in other news, I keep buying DVDs that I have no time to watch. But then as I said to my Nan the other day, nobody buys DVDs to watch anymore, they buy them to say that they have lots of iconic films in their movie collection so they can look cool.


And also if somebody could punch me in the head I would probably quite enjoy that right now. My head is buzzing again.

There's something really quite magical about watching for the first time a friend of yours get up on stage and perform. You get to watch the person you thought you knew transform into something you didn't realise they could be. You can't really know somebody until you've seen them do the thing they love, and for a few people that involves playing with their band.

Also, there's something a little heart-warming at being able to say about a band 'I went to see them before they were signed.' Because it makes you infinitely cooler to the people who become their fans later on.

Bandspam!

Glamour of the Kill
Burning Bridges
Kick Box Riot
Envy Assured

Now you can say you listened to them before they were cool too. And if they don't get famous, what have you got to lose?